I'm Not That FB Friendly, Really ...

[ponyboy]

Havent had a facebook account for probably 10 years now. Colossal waste of time. Not to mention facebook censors everything now...no thanks.

 

[Markola]

^^^^^^ Actually, many think the problem for society is, is they don’t censor ENOUGH, or at least they should moderate better the damaging content on their platform.

Their original business model was to aggressively harvest everyone’s personal data, sell it to the highest bidder and ignore the toxic, dangerous content growing in many corners of their platform, arguing that bad speech would be neutralized by more speech. After January 6 and countless other small and large disasters, it’s pretty clear that approach has failed civil society and it’s why Zuckerberg gets hauled in front of Congress to give lame apologies and promise nothing burger reforms on a regular basis, and why major regulation is eventually coming for them.

 

[easysurfer]

I ran the Boston Marathon in 2013, the year of the bombing. Fortunately I had finished 1/2 hour earlier and was well away from the finish line. One of the first things I did was to post on Facebook that some kind of explosion had happened, didn't know what, but I was safe and clear. I had a lot of people say that FB was the first place they checked to hopefully see that "safe" status message from me. This was by far the best way for me to let people know, so I've always seen value like this in FB.

And then there's crap like today, where I got a friend request from a former neighbor, who I am already friends with. And he passed a few years ago. Someone faked his identity and tried to friend his existing friends, for whatever reason. I hate this to begin with, and to have it happen to someone deceased is even worse.

I've decided to tighten things down a bit on my privacy FB settings. One is that only I can now see my entire friend list. My friends can now only see mutual friends. Was reading that a the faking someone's identity then trying to friend request that person's friends is a ploy the scammers use. For what reason, I'm thinking maybe to use as one of those granny held hostage scams ("Jimmy, this is your granny, I'm held hostage in the jungle somewhere, send me either $1000 in gift cards or bitcoin"). Or maybe start faking other profiles to use on dating scams. Who knows.

By not having my friends showing, this gives the scammers a smaller target. Plus, I didn't want to have some folks genuinely know trolling my friend list anyhow.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Oh yes, the "impostor scam" relies on peoples' profile photos and Friend lists being public. You can't hide your profile photo, but you can change your privacy settings so that only your friends can see who your (other) friends are! I'd urge everyone who has a FB account to go do that now.

On your Profile's About or Friends section, in your full Friends list (in the main content column, not the left sidebar), click the three dots in the upper right corner of the Friends section, then choose Edit Privacy.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Many thanks to the folk(s) that mentioned FB Purity as a browser extension. It took a little bit to get it set up, but it has made my FB experience SO MUCH BETTER. The chorological ordering of the feed (or lack there of) has been one of my chief complaints and this extension restores that ability.

Between that and hiding ads, posts with selected key words, etc...I can now "catch up" on FB in about 3 minutes which is about 2 minutes longer than I would like to spend but SO much better than the 30 minutes it would take to wade through all the posts that were jumbled up.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Oh yes, the "impostor scam" relies on peoples' profile photos and Friend lists being public. You can't hide your profile photo, but you can change your privacy settings so that only your friends can see who your (other) friends are! I'd urge everyone who has a FB account to go do that now. .

While you can't hide it, you *can* make it blank or have an unrelated picture. This is my current profile picture.

Also, you can go into your photos and delete/limit comments on your other pictures (including former profile pics). Some scammers have been able to figure out info from looking at who has reacted to your pics (including your profile pics). I set these to the most restricted safety settings that they have available.

One other thing, it doesn't hurt to "review" your account by looking at your "public profile" under the "view as" tab. They change where/how this is done often, so consult FB for the most current way.

 

[easysurfer]

While you can't hide it, you *can* make it blank or have an unrelated picture. This is my current profile picture.

Also, you can go into your photos and delete/limit comments on your other pictures (including former profile pics). Some scammers have been able to figure out info from looking at who has reacted to your pics (including your profile pics). I set these to the most restricted safety settings that they have available.

One other thing, it doesn't hurt to "review" your account by looking at your "public profile" under the "view as" tab. They change where/how this is done often, so consult FB for the most current way.

But without a profile picture of you, how do your real friends know the profile is you and not just somebody with a picture of a movie star (or some other picture)?

 

[Amethyst]

If they're real friends, they will know from your posts that it's you. Everybody has a style.

But without a profile picture of you, how do your real friends know the profile is you and not just somebody with a picture of a movie star (or some other picture)?

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

But without a profile picture of you, how do your real friends know the profile is you and not just somebody with a picture of a movie star (or some other picture)?

They know me and my shenanigans. It's an inside joke that only my true friends would understand; I don't let just any riff raff vagabonds into my circle

I think I have done a pretty good job of locking down my account since sometimes folks (on public groups/pages) will accuse me of being a Russian troll when I make a comment they don't agree with; this is fine by me.

 

[easysurfer]

They know me and my shenanigan's. It's an inside joke that only TRUE friends would understand.

I think I have done a pretty good job of locking down my account since sometimes folks (on public groups/pages) will accuse my account of being a Russian troll which is fine by me.

I've been locking down my FB the past several days. Actually pretty fun to do. Like closing off some doors and windows to prevent uninvited access.

You style is safer, not having a real picture of you. I decided to keep my picture though (from about 10 years ago). Good to never age .

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I've been locking down my FB the past several days. Actually pretty fun to do. Like closing off some doors and windows to prevent uninvited access.

You style is safer, not having a real picture of you. I decided to keep my picture though (from about 10 years ago). Good to never age .

I don't know if I would call it "fun" but more annoying at simply HOW MANY settings there are. I spend a good 30 minutes once a month or so making sure things are still locked down. I have an alter ego account that I created to make sure my settings are actually the way I think they are.

I think I look the same as 10 years ago (I am sure my DW would disagree) so that wouldn't help me.

 

[Cobra9777]

Oh yes, the "impostor scam" relies on peoples' profile photos and Friend lists being public. You can't hide your profile photo, but you can change your privacy settings so that only your friends can see who your (other) friends are! I'd urge everyone who has a FB account to go do that now...

+1

A scammer opened a FB acct using my 87-yo MIL's name and profile picture. The scammer never bothered friending anyone or doing anything else with the acct. But my MIL's friend list was 'public'. So the scammer used FB Messenger to send private messages to everyone in her friend list. The message went something like this... "Hi [friend name], this is [DMIL name). I found this really great charity that I'm donating to and I think you should to. So if you care about this cause as much as I do, here's how you can donate..." Fairly clever scam actually.

My wife immediately started getting messages from mutual friends that all said, "I think your Mom has been hacked." It was pretty obvious that the style of language and the whole idea behind it was nothing at all like how my MIL would write or behave.

I was quickly able to find the fake account. I just searched on her name and two popped up with the same profile picture. FB has a mechanism for reporting an account that is impersonating someone else. I did that and the next day it was gone.

I also posted an explanation of what had happened on my MIL's FB page, so all her friends who got those weird messages understood. I also made her friend list private and tightened down her security settings generally.

The default setting in FB is that your friend list is public. So you definitely should check that if you're not sure and make it private or only visible to friends.

 

[RVplusDog]

FB - I have two profiles - one “real” with my true family & friends connections - maybe 400-ish. I only go on there occasionally to catch up with a few friends & family that I find fun.

Second FB profile is completely generic & fake, and it’s what I use daily. Generic, common short name (Pat), indeterminate pronouns, “prefer not to say” gender. This profile does all day to day interactions and postings, searches, group memberships and administration. It does have a couple hundred friends, mostly common group members with common interests. I have zero need to scroll the feed to catch up on anything. I just go to my groups or ask my questions where appropriate.

It’s great for local interests - hiking trails, obscure location GPS coordinates, dog park meetups, road/traffic/wildfire conditions, restaurant or handyman recommendations. I’ve met several of my new, local FB friends IRL for hikes or dog play dates, and come clean at that time re:the fake profile. It’s not as uncommon nor as weird as I thought it was, apparently. They’re all still IRL friends & don’t care what name I use on FB.

 

[jollystomper]

I only sign into facebook no more than once a week. I just went a month without signing in. I post something many 3-4 times a year. 99.9% of my friends are people I know in real life, and they all friended me; I have not friended anyone. Many of my younger relatives itis the only way to stay connected to them, though many of them have started to migrate to Instagram.

I ignore most friend requests if I do not know the person; on a few occasions, if they have been friends of my sibling, I have asked the sibling if it is worth friending this person.

Even then you have to be careful. My profile is private and I once posted a "throwback" picture of DW and I from our dating years. One of my friends, a former co-worker that until then had not done anything weird, decided to copy it and send it out via email to a bunch of current and former co-workers. When I asked him that I did not want that does, his replay was "then why did you post the pic?". Lesson learned, and he is no longer a FB friend.

That's probably the thing I am most concerned about. You realize that anything you put up there, no matter how you secure it, Facebook still has it, and they can behave, in my view, in a very sketchy manner. Just in the way they make it difficult to completely delete a profile, particularly for a deceased person, speaks volumes.